Wow surprised More FM’s still giving offpeak hours a hosted slot, good for them.
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https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360565868/changes-coming-threenews-anchor-lineup
If I read this right, Laura Tupou is going to move from weekend newsreading, to weeknight weather presenting. So what’s happening with Heather Keats? Is she going back to The Sound?
Heather has moved onto a role at the Metservice.
Dallas Gurney (ex-Today FM & Newstalk ZB head of content) and his wife Donna (ex-Warner Bros. Discover senior sales director) on what life is like after leaving media, ditching Auckland and becoming grocers at a general store instead. Sounds very idyllic.
A heart attack prompted Dallas to resign from his role leading Today FM, but before he’d even left the building, parent company Mediaworks dramatically shut the station.
The couple decided even if they could continue to hold senior roles in an industry where job security is fraught, the prospect was no longer appealing.
“Our whole lives would be cutting, cutting, cutting, and pulling money out of budgets, and frankly, making people redundant, and neither of us wanted to do that”
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Spent many a summer holiday up there the store is a lovely shop its across from the area school and footbridge wish dallas well
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Had a listen to Edge Drive today, not my station of choice but what I heard of the new show sounded decent for day 1. I think 2026 move them to Edge Breakfast and Clint Meg and Dan to More FM Drive
I had no idea Brian FM had so many transmitters covering all of Marlborough - are they based in Blenheim? Who operates it? (A guy named Brian?)
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Originated in Blenheim and its owner Andrew Jeffries lives there. Ironically spent a lot of his career programming ‘traditional stations’ in the UK and the USA for Iheart Media.
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Watching you tube last night and i stumbled across the duncan garner podcast where he interviewed simon barnett very moving and sad but brave as well wish simon and his family well after whst he has been through
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He seems like a solid guy. I remember when he ran Today FM, there was an earthquake or similar, I want to say during the summer holiday, and he was there producing emergency shows (and maybe presenting as well?). He seems that rare example of a media manager with a soul.
That would’ve been the Auckland floods. both Chris Reeder (CD) and Dallas were broadcasting rolling coverage through till early morning - then Cyclone Gabrielle hit a few days after.
It was a really great example of how immediate radio can be - bloody shame it ended weeks later
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Why was More so unpopular last year in Wellington? What did they prefer instead?
More has battled for Wellington in years despite being the market it was set up in - @HUFF will probably know the stats but it’s been a long time if they’re successful there.
It suffered for a while going against a ZM network show that was perceived as local (Polly and Grant).
It’s also a slightly odd market - RNZ National is very big there with public servants and the commercial ones don’t follow the order of elsewhere
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Fantastic to know, thanks @OnAir
Interesting about the persistent misconception of the ZM show.
Yes, did notice RNZ National and Concert were surprisingly on in shops when I visited last year. They’re good quality stations. Concert I heard a lot in many bookshops all over the country, more approachable presentation than ABC Classic.
Yes - I should probably clarify it did start as a local show but branched out to be network in the 2000s and retained a lot of the Wellington audience.
That Breeze studio in Timaru looks really nice - did they completely rip out the former Port setup and redo it entirely, or was it more of a spruce-up?
As to More FM Wgtn, I remember listening to it just after it launched when visiting in 1991. It played a very odd mix of music, I thought - although as a teenager at the time I was probably more interested in the Top 40 stuff…something I thought ZMFM did not do well until at least 1994.
Interestingly, I found all of the best new music on Aotearoa Radio.
re Polly and Grant, I remember their show on ZM rating its socks off in Wellington so TRN decided to expand it nationwide in 2001. I know it did okay in some other places, but nowhere near as good as in Wellington. I understood they did want to move on by the early 2010s though as they were nearing their 60s doing youth radio…which didn’t really work. I recall their time on The Hits started out okay but a fair number of listeners didn’t like losing their local breakfast show.
It was a pity they got the boot from More Wellington, I reckon they would have done quite well there (I must confess I never got to hear their show when they were doing it). From memory coronavirus bought an end to that - is that correct?
something I have been wondering lately … anyone know what Adam Percival is doing at Mediaworks now not on air (think he said that he would still fill in for Simon and be BTS… but in what role ?)
Yeah, they were certainly most popular in Wellington - they were hamstrung by sounding ‘old’ compared to The Edge at the time on a network level as I recall as the 2000s went on.
Their exit from ZM was overdue but also mismanaged - The Hits didn’t really fit them either when that brand (re)launched and the show was feeling a little tired (for example, it was trying to leverage celebrity interviews still when the cache in celebrity interviews had gone - with the accessibility of stars via social media themselves or in easily accessible interviews via YouTube). I’m not really sure what TRN (as it was) could have done as they desperately needed to rejuvenate ZM. Perhaps put Polly and Grant on Wellington ‘The Hits’ only, launched a new The Hits breakfast show for network…
Yep - then Polly went off to Today FM.
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You just triggered a memory! I remember when The Edge launched in Wgtn in March 2000 (I was living there at the time). Up until then, ZM had mostly had the youth market to themselves following the closure of The Box and the decline of Channel Z. Polly and Grant started their show at 6 - but The Edge started theirs at 5, from memory to cater to the Waikato farmers. ZM at that time was still playing their overnight show with the overnight announcer.
Suddenly about a month or so later, The Morning Crew started their show at 5 as well - maybe they could smell the competition in the air and decided they needed to move with the times?
In any case once The Edge arrived in Wellington I barely listened to ZM there again, ever - the music mix on The Edge was (back then) light years ahead of the tired, repetitive playlist that ZM Wgtn had been serving up for the last 3-4 years.
Ironically (before networking) I visited Auckland and found the ZM station there was far, far, far better than the Wellington one, with much better music variety. Made me wonder why Wellington didn’t follow in their footsteps! Of course a few years later it became a moot point when ZM Wgtn became mostly networked - one of the few times I would say that networking a station actually improved it.
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